I've usually admired Sidney Pollack's work as a direct (and actor) and he's pretty good here in both roles. The direction is just about flawless -- not too much stylization, but just enough. The photography is crisp and colorful when it needs to be and the darkness is properly ominous. The location shooting captures New York in several of its moods. And the acting can't be criticized. Sean Penn does a fine, subdued job. And, I mean, who could criticize the performance of Nicole Kidman, even if she couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag? How come the Commonwealth keeps fielding these toothsome blonds, anyway? We cannot NOT mention Catherine Keener, who has both talent and a facial bone structure that seems made for film, a structure that could go either way -- sympathetic or sinister, here the former.
So why is the film dull? Well, the story has multiple twists and confusing characters and no genuine plot engine. It's as if whoever was responsible for the story had become so thoroughly familiar with the characters and their backgrounds while developing them that he or she thought a few words of description or a photograph would be enough for an ordinary viewer to keep the characters straight. It isn't. Not for me, anyway. It helped a bit that one of the villains, the chief of security at the UN, looks like a heavy, with eyes slightly askew. I had him pegged right away. (But then I had Catherine Keener, Penn's associate and friend, pegged for dead meat and I was wrong about that.)
There is a quick outline, two or three minutes' worth, telling us about the African guy who was once a democratic rebel leader and has since become a genocidal dictator. And there are two guys who are trying to get rid of him so they can replace him. One of the would-be replacements looks confusingly like the janitor at the UN -- or maybe he IS the janitor, or the janitor's roomie. A bus blows up. Penn's wife has recently been killed in a car crash with her boyfriend. Some French guy commits suicide by bleeding himself out in a bath tub for reasons none of us would kill ourselves over. The plot is impenetrable. The viewer's mind drifts.
Here's the wind-up before the pitch. Kidman is a translator at the UN. She accidentally overhears part of a plot to kill the dictator of an African country and she reports it to the authorities. She has a hell of a time convincing them she's not lying. And here's the pitch. At the climax we find that she and her family have been destroyed -- emotionally or physically -- by this dictator long before the story begins and had planned to murder him. Now she holds him at gunpoint, about to blow his brains all over the place, before Sean Penn talks her out of it. Question: If she planned to kill the guy anyway, why did she squeal when she overheard somebody ELSE's plot to kill him? Oops -- a beanball.
A nicely mounted film. Too bad.
So why is the film dull? Well, the story has multiple twists and confusing characters and no genuine plot engine. It's as if whoever was responsible for the story had become so thoroughly familiar with the characters and their backgrounds while developing them that he or she thought a few words of description or a photograph would be enough for an ordinary viewer to keep the characters straight. It isn't. Not for me, anyway. It helped a bit that one of the villains, the chief of security at the UN, looks like a heavy, with eyes slightly askew. I had him pegged right away. (But then I had Catherine Keener, Penn's associate and friend, pegged for dead meat and I was wrong about that.)
There is a quick outline, two or three minutes' worth, telling us about the African guy who was once a democratic rebel leader and has since become a genocidal dictator. And there are two guys who are trying to get rid of him so they can replace him. One of the would-be replacements looks confusingly like the janitor at the UN -- or maybe he IS the janitor, or the janitor's roomie. A bus blows up. Penn's wife has recently been killed in a car crash with her boyfriend. Some French guy commits suicide by bleeding himself out in a bath tub for reasons none of us would kill ourselves over. The plot is impenetrable. The viewer's mind drifts.
Here's the wind-up before the pitch. Kidman is a translator at the UN. She accidentally overhears part of a plot to kill the dictator of an African country and she reports it to the authorities. She has a hell of a time convincing them she's not lying. And here's the pitch. At the climax we find that she and her family have been destroyed -- emotionally or physically -- by this dictator long before the story begins and had planned to murder him. Now she holds him at gunpoint, about to blow his brains all over the place, before Sean Penn talks her out of it. Question: If she planned to kill the guy anyway, why did she squeal when she overheard somebody ELSE's plot to kill him? Oops -- a beanball.
A nicely mounted film. Too bad.